Nolan is cock on

says rafa is playing the crowd and has ahd enough money to spend

decent bit in the kronikle

Nolan's got a point because it always boils down to this not spending enough and such, which is fair enough in one point but not the full story altogether in terms of where we are or where we should be or where we deserve to be.

Last season in the championship he was allowed to spend nearly 90 million.
This season he spend just over 40 million.
It doesn't matter whether it was a net spend. The fact is is was a spend.

You don't own gold bars and then spend cash buying in diamonds then using some gold bars to buy more diamonds and say that the gold bar outlay doesn't count as spending.
If you get my drift.

Rafa hasn't had a kings ransom but he's had enough money to tweak the squad enough to easily stay in the premier league.
He just bought badly in many respects and it was all down to him so no blame can be attached to anyone else.

Yeah I know he missed out on targets but considering we were championship going into premier league, it's hardly surprising, no matter who we all think Benitez is.

I'd rather the man succeeds than fails of course but he has no excuses to make other than to hold up his own hands and say he gets it wrong as much as he gets it right.

It's a fine line between being hero worshipped and being the villain. Some people are given more time than others, like Rafa is, but I guarantee that, if many other managers were in charge of us, they would not be getting away with the excuses so easily and certainly not getting away with the football served up 80% of the time.

i think a lot of peoples problems are they see rafa as not doing anything wrong
and see ash as not being able to do anything right
ash got rafa here

ash said and was honest enough to back him last year in the fizzy and then this year clearly say you can have all the money the club generates
the truth is he didnt ship enough out

he spent far to much time digging at ash
and he brought very unwisely

and im thinking of murphy and joselwho when i say that

every manager would want more
but most managers buy for the necessary positions at any cost

we are a striker short and a left back short miniumu

we were last season and he still is this

Aye, Ashley backed him in the Chimpo and fair enough...but he needed to so we could build a squad of decent Chimpo and lower half of the Prem players so that we could get out of that league.

Only Stoke spent less than us in the Summer (although when the fee for Merino is added it takes us above Bournemouth and Burnley) and we needed to spend way more than we did to build a squad capable of surviving then thriving in the Prem. We spent less to prepare for this season than we did for the league below and now it'd beginning to show.

With hindsight, spending £10/12 mil (whatever it was) on Murphy doesn't look the wisest move given our need for a striker but, as we've discussed before, I suspect Rafa bought Murphy believing there was money for a striker.

The fact that we bought Manquillo and Joselu shows how limited our budget was rather than how limited Rafa's player judgement is, imo but it's hard to dispute that they're poor players (harsh on Manquillo, maybe, given he's playing on the wrong side but despite allowing him that I think he's awful).

The fact he brought joslwho tells me he knows pheck all

truth is
he got rid of carr so he could be in controll
now if you are in controll thats is what you are
you will know what you have and what you need
you dont always get what you want

he wouldnt have had time to use the contacts he thouhght he had or indeed worked on players thinking carr might still be in charge .
So why he got rid of him in such an important window is beyond me

rumour has it carr had clubs for a lot of the dead wood and had players lined up

i would have stuck with carr for thatt window and got rid ready for this one

far to much was going on for him to shift carr so quick

I can't explain Murphy. But in Rafa I trust.

Give the man money. And give him control. He'll give you football.

Best manager we've had since Hughton. And he's much better than Hughton.

Can't sculpt a statue with a pile of wet sh1t. With a few quality signings, we will be a decent proposition:

• Cover for Lascelles
• LB
• RB
• Attacking, creative mid
• A clinical striker

I reckon £80m investment from Staylovely will get the bulk of that. We don't need massive surgery. But we desperately need some quality and a focal point in the team. Kinda what Kebabs was when he was here. If I just had to have one signing, I'd sign a creative mid because we are not linking up play in a calm, controlled way. Too many sprayed passes, "long passes" and messy build-up play.

- - -

With our existing criminals:

•*Get Mitro fit
•*Keep Gayle fit
•*Bench Joselu
• Sell Perez
•*Release Big Murph or feed the big man more crosses
• Keep Yedlin on the wing. No more makeshift RB nonsense
• Stop Fester from getting reds

Good summing up Trini.